Artistic/Entertainment Value

Moral/Spiritual Value

Age Appropriateness

MPAA Rating

Caveat Spectator

Both are romantic comedies — or comedic romances? — starring
Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn, directed by George Cukor, and
written by Donald Ogden Stewart from Philip Barry stage plays.
With their light comic touch, romantic complications, and class
consciousness, both films superficially resemble screwball
comedy, yet neither is quite screwball. The lack of bizarre
situations and outlandish behavior, the nuanced, sympathetic
characterizations, and the rich, resonant dialogue all set them
apart from screwball classics like Bringing Up Baby or My Man Godfrey.

Where The Philadelphia Story is more satiric,
Holiday is more compassionate and bittersweet. Its premise — working-class man falls in love with society heiress — may be
familiar, but it eschews such plot mechanics as comic
misunderstandings and elaborate deceptions; the story begins with
Johnny Case (Grant) discovering the truth about the Seton family
fortune, and it never looks back. Even when Johnny’s intended
insists that he wear a borrowed tie to meet her father, and Daddy
recognizes the tie, there’s no attempted cover-up — just a
cheerful admission of the truth. (Even The Philadelphia
Story had its "Uncle Willy" piffle.)

Dialogue and characterizations are note-perfect, and the story
never missteps. This is one of the great ones.